Members of the European Parliament for Europe of Values
The fall of the Santer Commission in 1999 pushed complaints about accountability and corruption in European institutions to the forefront of the minds of the electorate, and the failure of those institutions to deal with these issues led to a growth in not only Eurosceptic parties, but also Eurocritical movements which appealed to Eurosceptics and moderate Europhiles alike. Italia dei Valori, led by former Tangentopoli prosecutor Antonio di Pietro, was a pre-existing small party of the questionable centre-left which keyed into populist rhetoric in order to campaign against the remaining corruption in the Italian state. For the 2004 European elections, Di Pietro teamed up with ex-Communists including former PDS leader Achille Occhetto and won two seats - Occhetto resigned immediately, not having expected to be elected, and was replaced by another Communist journalist, Giulietto Chiesa.
This pair, upon their arrival in the European Parliament, discovered that a range of similar parties had been - even more unexpectedly - catapulted into prominence, and soon after, a Europarty was formed under the name 'Europe of Values'. Subsequently, it affiliated to the ALDE Parliamentary group, much to the chagrin of certain members. The group was made up of Italy of Values, together with the Dutch party Europe Transparent (whose purist goal was an end to fraud and corruption in Europe), the similarly transparency-focused List of former Austrian Social Democrat MEP Hans-Peter Martin, and the Transparent Suit Coalition.
This last group formed the largest component of the Europarty. It had been founded by former Independent MP and war correspondent Martin Bell in advance of the Euro elections and, like Di Pietro, Bell had sought out the organisational structures of the far left as a basis upon which to build his movement - the Socialist Party of England and Wales, valuable for their eager cadre of newspaper-hawkers, were persuaded to join the Coalition and managed to produce an MEP, Dave Nellist, on Bell's list. The Eurosceptic Continuity Liberal Party were also recruited and Steve Radford elected, and the other star candidates were Marta Andreasen (the EU's former Chief Accountant, who had acted as a whistleblower two years before) and Robert Kilroy-Silk, a former Labour MP who nonetheless headed up the Eurosceptic Right of the Coalition. He had also been a target for recruitment to UKIP, but had chosen Bell's movement instead, and UKIP railed against him and Bell for splitting the Eurosceptic vote and denying them any seat gains - however, when it became apparent that Kilroy wouldn't be able to outmanouevre Bell to become the leader of either the TSC or Europe of Values (still less to push his allies to join the Independence/Democracy group), he stormed off to UKIP, and is blamed for their bitter collapse over the next few years.
The collapse of Europe of Values was almost as bitter, though: Hans-Peter Martin's number two abandoned ship to stand for a more successful liberal party on a national level; Dave Nellist found himself very unhappy in ALDE and succumbed to pressure from his Socialist Party to defect to GUE-NGL, which he did in 2007; Steve Radford found himself ill-equipped for the media spotlight and press investigations into his Continuity Liberal Party found some dark secrets lying within, which eventually produced his resignation in favour of the Nellistite ex-Poll Tax rebel Roger Bannister, who followed his leader into GUE-NGL months later; Europe Transparent split as van Buitenen bullied de Groen into crossing over to the Green group, and then defected to a Dutch Christian party; and the ex-Communist Putin apologist Giulietto Chiesa went off to stand, unsuccessfully, for the Latvian Russian Union in 2009.
In that year, Italy of Values and Martin's List were the only EoV members to be re-elected, but both increased their seat counts and were joined by an MEP from the Czech party Public Affairs. The implosion of all of these parties over the next few years resulted in the Europarty being wound up in 2012. When former Hans-Peter Martin's List MEP Martin Ehrenhauser was re-elected in 2014 for the Different Europe coalition, there was a brief flurry of interest in a revamped Europe of Values party involving the Czech ANO 2011 and the Italian Five Star Movement, but it came to naught.
In the UK, the impact of the Transparent Suit Coalition is often understated, partly because of its brief existence and partly because nobody cares about European politics. However, their failure to recruit the Greens to their Coalition (even though Jean Lambert was keen) and their seeming suicide pact with UKIP encouraged the Greens to develop their own Eurocritical credentials in competition with their weakest rivals. Since then, they have become the voice of British opposition to Brussels, along with the Tories and BNP, and became the largest British delegation to the EU Parliament in 2014.
Martin Bell's infamous media appearances in his transparent suit yielded one positive: the celebrated Private Eye cover, "I think I can see his Bell End"